Welcome to the first Weekend Streamer for the revamped blog. This weekend’s selection is “American Psycho,” and here are five reasons to watch it.

1- The best acting of Christian Bale’s career: Bale is best known for playing Batman in Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight” trilogy, which required him to be super intense and in control, with rare moments of the anger bursting out from beneath a seemingly placid surface. In “American Psycho,” on the other band, Bale’s character of Patrick Bateman is totally at the whim of his homicidal urges and is NEVER in control. And Bateman has a ball with the role, mixing his considerable charisma with a combination of arrogance, snobbish intellectualism and bloodlust. Much like Leonardo DiCaprio cut loose in “The Wolf of Wall Street” after a decade of super-intense, psychologically driven roles, Bale’s acting in “American Psycho” shows a completely different side of his range, and it’s just as compelling. (There’s a reason this scene is so well known.)

2- It’s really, really funny in a very dark way: There’s a finesse required to mine humor from a movie about a character who’s not only a serial killer, but a serial killer who’s a total egoist determined at every turn to show off how superior he is in every way. People like that are insufferable, but it’s a credit to Bale, writer-director Mary Harron, her co-writer Guinevere Turner and the source novel by Bret Easton Ellis that “American Psycho” is genuinely funny. The trick is that the humor comes from laughing AT the characters, not with them (because pretty much everyone in this movie is a terrible human being). The funniest scene in the movie shows Bateman and his partners at a Wall Street firm showing off how fancy their business cards are, fetishizing over the thickness of the cards, the card stock, the lettering, the color, and so on. It’s patently absurd, but it obviously matters so much to the characters, and so we laugh.

3- The dialogue: When it comes to rich dialogue in movies, Quentin Tarantino is king, but “American Psycho” has plenty of memorable lines. The dialogue is super formal and overly mannered, but it fits with the slightly surreal tone of the movie and makes sense in the context of a bunch of rich yuppies constantly trying to prove how smart they are. Bateman’s speeches about music (he has long monologues about the virtues of Huey Lewis, Genesis and Whitney Houston) are wonders to behold, both because of the prose itself and also because he sounds so unbelievably pretentious while delivering them.

4- It has a point to make: “American Psycho” was released in 2000, but it’s set in the 1980s, a perfect time in which to set a story about vanity, greed and self-indulgence run amok. Bateman, with his high body count, preening mannerisms and misogynistic outlook, is the worst character of the bunch, but his Wall Street colleagues are almost as bad; they’re just as self-centered and demeaning toward women as he is, they just haven’t taken that last step. The movie is not only a critique of Bateman, but the entire culture and attitude he represents.

5- The message doesn’t get in the way: Movies that are out to make a point often let their message get in the way of actually letting the movie be good (cough “Crash” cough). “American Psycho,” thankfully, doesn’t fall into that trap. The subtext about greed, male vanity and so on stays as subtext as the story progresses and we watch Bateman struggle to keep his double life from spilling into the open. The movie never forgets to be entertaining even as it issues its damning critique, and that’s something that’s all too rare.

“American Psycho” is available for streaming on Netflix and Amazon Instant Video, where it’s free for Amazon Prime members. Check back next Sunday for another Weekend Streamer.

About This Blog

Rob Ryan joined The Gainesville Sun in 2010 after graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder. Though he graduated with a degree in journalism, he also studied film and is a longtime cinephile. Rob now spends his days soaking up all things cinema and his nights on the copy desk. His favorite movies are the original Star Wars trilogy.